“Secondhand Lions” is a delightful movie starring Haley Joel Osment as a young boy being raised by an irresponsible mother (Kyra Sedgwick). When his mother comes up with yet another get-ahead idea, this time a court reporting school in Ft. Worth, Walter is taken to live with two great-uncles he’s never met. Later, when he discovers that his mother never did enroll in that school, Walter feels abandoned and betrayed, but his uncles step in to take up the slack, in their own unique ways.
Garth and Hub are unusual men, to say the least. They’re both getting on in years, and in fact, dropped out of sight for the last forty of them, to show up recently on a dilapidated farm in Texas amidst rumors that they had millions of dollars stashed away somewhere. Their favorite pastime is to sit on the front porch with their rifles and chase salesmen off their property. When Walter is delivered, they don’t have the faintest idea what to do with him, and aren’t sure if they even want to find out, but soon they have formed a relationship and are getting along together really well.
Hub (Robert Duvall) sleepwalks down to the pond a couple times a week, and one night Walter asks Garth (Michael Caine) what Hub is looking for. Garth spins a fanciful tale of himself and Hub as young men, setting off to see the world and getting Shanghaied by the French Foreign Legion to serve in Africa. Hub fell in love with a beautiful princess and rescued her from an arranged marriage with a powerful sheik, fighting off hundreds of men. When he walks down by the pond at night, he’s looking for his princess, who died some years before.
Walter’s not sure what to think of this story, but he does know that he loves his uncles and their eccentricities more every day. He encourages them to spend some of their money on things they’ll really enjoy, and they buy a skeet shooter, gardening seeds (and gardening outfits – complete with overalls) They even ship in a lion so they can go on a lion hunt. “You bought a used lion?” Walter asks them, incredulous. Each day is an adventure, especially the day they went down to the feed store to order several bags of Purina Lion Chow.
There is a little bit of violence and a little bit of language in this film, but not enough to shake my enjoyment of it. I found this movie to be absolutely delightful, especially the conclusion, which I’m not going to give away because I really want you to see it for yourself.
This film is rated PG.
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